From what I can understand, the show was moved to CBS in the final year. Steve and Laura got engaged, but they didnt get married because supposedly the show was axed before the final episode aired. But I could be wrong.

On a diffrent note, Remember Judy Winslow? She was the youngest daughter that they wrote out of the show after the 4th season with no explanation. Well Jaimee Foxworth the actress who played her ended up doing porn.

The PLAN was for Urkel to marry Laura in the big teary series finale. The last two episodes taped (the previous season finale) involved Urkel going into space for vaguely explained reasons. After production CBS decided to axe the show and by the time anybody working for the show figured out things, the sets had already been destroyed and another show was using their soundstage.

Originally posted by rockdotcom_2.0On a diffrent note, Remember Judy Winslow? She was the youngest daughter that they wrote out of the show after the 4th season with no explanation. Well Jaimee Foxworth the actress who played her ended up doing porn.

One reasoning I've read was that Judy just went up to her room and didn't bother coming down. If she did, we didn't see it.

I once read a rumor that the lady who played the mother on the show ended up walking out of the show altogether because she was sick of being upstaged by Jaleel White when it was supposed to be HER spin-off from Perfect Strangers.

I think that was true, because wasn't there a new mother in the last seasons?

Originally posted by Super Shane SpearI once read a rumor that the lady who played the mother on the show ended up walking out of the show altogether because she was sick of being upstaged by Jaleel White when it was supposed to be HER spin-off from Perfect Strangers.

I think that was true, because wasn't there a new mother in the last seasons?

The following is typed w/o help from IMDb, TV Tome, etc.

Yes, this is what I read also. The actress (JoMarie Payton, I think) played a character on Perfect Strangers, then gets the spinoff which was supposed to be about her and her family; the first few episodes had no Urkel. Urkel wasn't a regular character until the second season. I also remember reading somewhere that the cast was getting jealous of Urkel stealing the show and slowly becoming the main focus of the show right around the time he became a regular character. (I may be getting a little redundant here...)

There was a new actress (Elder was her last name, but I can't think of her first) who replaced her for the final two seasons. The last season was buried on Saturday night after failing to get good ratings on CBS' version of TGIF Friday night lineup. Yes, the last time we saw Urkel was when a two-part episode when he was a astronaut and then proposed to Laura in space. There may have been a dumping of the Stephan character somewhere, but that's just a hazy memory and may not have happened.

There was no wedding episode, and after all these years I thought to myself "Why was Urkel going through loops for Laura when he always had Myra for a girlfriend?" This may help one of my personal theories about nerdy male characters in fiction: "the nerdy guy never gets the girl who's just as or weirder/nerdier/zanier than he is." (Okay, so Screech may be an exception, but still...)

All this stuff about the one character being bigger than the family he/she lives with is then resulting in some cast change making me think of other examples where this occurred (i.e. Happy Days, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, etc).

According to IMDB: Harriett Winslow [Jo Marie Payton-Noble] was an elevator operator on "Perfect Strangers" from 1987 to 1989. ABC found her character tested well, so they spun her off into "Family Matters" where she was basically, y'know, raising a family with the help of her husband, Carl [Reginald VelJohnson]. She still worked as an elevator operator, or at least they never mentioned that she stopped doing that. She left, did a job, and came home every day. Anyhoo, Steve Urkel first appeared in the 4th episode with a quick walk-on. He wasn't supposed to appear again, but he tested well so he was brought back in the 12th episode and began pining after Laura. Another Urkel appearance in the 17th episode tested well, and he was more or less added to the show. He became like Kramer, except twice as annoying. Instead of being about the Winslows and their wacky adventures as a black family in Chicago making their way as best they could...it became the wacky misadventures of their bumbling annoying neighbour. When the show moved to CBS in 1997, they basically revamped the Urkel character...keeping the annoying things and getting rid of the few endearing qualities he had. It seems as if the cast had an option in their contracts or something as to whether or not they stayed when the show moved, so Peyton-Noble left the show and was replaced by Judyann Elder for the show's last season.

And the Fresh Prince comparison is off-base. The entire premise of the show was "Kid from East Philadelphia lives with rich relatives with wacky results". The producers were just very, very smart by protecting Will Smith's lack of acting chops by surrounding him with seasoned vets until he could learn stuff. There's a lot more Will-centric episodes near the end of the show because he could support them.

Originally posted by Freeway420And the Fresh Prince comparison is off-base. The entire premise of the show was "Kid from East Philadelphia lives with rich relatives with wacky results". The producers were just very, very smart by protecting Will Smith's lack of acting chops by surrounding him with seasoned vets until he could learn stuff. There's a lot more Will-centric episodes near the end of the show because he could support them.

Yeah, I see your point; I was running out of energy with my last post. However, I know the entire premise of Fresh Prince of Bel Air was all about Will Smith, but I was referring to the (probable?) reason why the actress who first played Aunt Vivian still found something (too Will-centric, little screen time for her, poor scripting of the other cast?) to complain about, which resulted in a new actress playing Vivian in the fourth season.

(Edit: Okay, so I looked up info about the Janet Hubert-Whitten, who first played Vivian, on Google, and while her entry on IMDb said that she was fired because of her pregrancy, a Usenet post which cites an LA Times article stated that it was a salary dispute. Off-base? Try my being off-planet.)

Fresh Prince is the best sitcom of all time in my opinion. Besides Viven i can't hink of a character i didn't enjoy from Phil(of corse) to baby Nicky. Show never got really old becuase it ended reltivley short(6 seasons?) on a pretty good note.